desserted

Friday, August 22, 2008

Are the health claims on food labels for real?

EU food safety agency disputes products' health benefit claims
Friday • August 22, 2008 - Todayonline.com.sg

The EU food safety agency on Thursday disputed claims of health benefits by food manufacturers, notably that dairy products promote good teeth and healthy body weight in children.

"A cause and effect relationship is not established between the consumption of milk or cheese and dental health in children (or) a healthy body weight in children and adolescents," the European Food Safety Agency said on its website.

Issuing its first eight preliminary opinions on a total of 228 product claims submitted for testing, EFSA cast doubt on commercial claims made for specific drugs.

The claim that "regulat®.pro.kid IMMUN" strengthens children's immune systems could not be verified by the evidence provided, EFSA said.

The agency, based in Parma, Italy, also found "no significant effect" of "NeOpuntia®" on blood lipid parameters (fatty acid or oil absorption) and no direct effect of "Femarelle®" on post-menopausal women's bone density.

The drug "Elancyl Global Silhouette®" has no demonstrable effect on body weight, body shape or body fat or water in humans, EFSA also concluded.

The panel further found insufficient evidence to back the claim that a-linolenic acid and linoleic acid promote children's normal growth and development.

One product, plant sterols used for lowering blood cholesterol, received a partial nod from EFSA, which proposed wording that "reflects the available scientific evidence: 'Plant sterols have been shown to lower/reduce blood cholesterol'."

However it said the product should be used only by those "who need and want to lower their blood cholesterol and that patients on cholesterol-lowering medication should only consume the product under medical supervision." — AFP

The fast-paced lifestyles of the people in today's society have inadvertently led to the production of convenience food and is also seen as the driving power behind the R&D of even more convenience food products.

However, the focus of these products is now on their functionality. Termed as 'functional foods', food companies hope for the gradual replacement of health supplements by their products. It is not uncommon for us to see words like "fortified", "enriched", "antioxidants", etc on food product labels these days.

Are these food products really that incredible? I'm more inclined to think not. I've done an internship at the R&D centre of an MNC early last year and had a first hand experience on how food companies go about with the development of their food products, from brainstorming to creating prototypes and then on to the finalisation and the marketing of the products.

So what was my role as an intern? I saw myself as the search engine and my daily work was all about scanning through s

cientific journals to sieve out beneficial information on the nutrient that they intend to include in their new product line. Terms like linoleic acid, omega-6, omega-3, lycopene and so on are no longer foreign to the health conscious consumers of today. We are generally more aware of what's present in our foods these days. These nutrients are abundant in fresh foods, but how about processed foods? Do the nutrients remain unmodified after having gone through the processing line?

As mentioned in the article above, the EU food safety agency deemed some health claims unacceptable due to a lack of scientific evidence to back up those claims. This is in line with the research materials that I read as an intern. While it is for sure that the specified nutrients, when extracted and purified, do impart some form of health benefits, most of the research are still in their preliminary stages whereby the tests were conducted on lab rats (!!!). No doubt there are some similarities between rats and humans (we're both mammals. we both have eyes, nose, ears and mouths but humans have got no tail), but numerous trials have to conducted on homo sapiens for the claims and results to be conclusive. This is also the basis for any food product regulating body to decide if the health claim in question is authentic or not. Processed food have to be sterilised at high heat and this treatment itself lends a big question mark to the presence of the nutrients in the products we buy off the supermarket shelves.

Food companies know exactly what the consumers are looking out for, hence most choose to place the emphasis on the nutritional benefits their products may offer. However, certain food companies can be too overzealous in edging out competition such that they simply slap on seemingly relevant health claims onto their products without a thought.

My stint as a food company intern has certainly made me a skeptic when it comes to functional food products. It's always a good thing to read through and review food labels!

It'll be interesting to note that this issue of misleading food-labelling is not new. Here's an article, dating back to 1986, on the importance of explicit health claims on food labels, if you're keen to know more.

Labels: Controversy, Food labels, Functional foods, Nutrition

by Ms Lim HM @ 5:23 PM - 0 comments